NExt time you make a beef stew, maybe a Provencal style one that includes orange peel and black olives, add a few chopped anchovies early on. They do wonders for flavor without adding any detectable fishiness. I often use anchovies in subtle ways. Also sardines, mackerel, blue fish, herring, all the oily fish MUST be super fresh or they taste fishy. xx

Welcome to Ericademane.com

I am a chef, food writer, and teacher who specializes in improvisational Italian cooking. I am the author of The Flavors of Southern Italy and Pasta Improvvisata, as well as Williams-Sonoma Pasta, which is available at Williams-Sonoma stores. A member of the Association of Culinary Professionals and the Italian-based International Slow Food Movement, I live in New York City. I offer private cooking classes, which you can learn about here.

Favorite Things

Dining with the Saints

Please check out www.novena.com for my monthly column "Dining with the Saints," which features recipes for saints' days. The beautiful, art-filled blog is written by Barbara Calamari and Sandra DiPasqua and includes the stories of the lives of saints and monthly novenas and prayers. They've written many books on the subject and really know their stuff. I, on the other hand, am a fraud, a Catholic lapsed all the way to atheism. But I love researching and creating great recipes to go with these amazing stories.

The Italian Recipe Exchange

Would you like to share one of your favorite Italian recipes with the world? Please click here to find out how.

Women with Fish

An ongoing series of photos of anything that can be considered "Women with Fish." If you have any photo you'd like to see in it, send it along to me, at edemane@earthlink.net.

Archival Articles

. . . containing hundreds of recipes are being posted as blog posts, dated back to when they first appeared. Look for them by browsing through the archival index ("Categories") above or by using the search window at the top of this page. Thanks for your patience.